


the notions of us (don't mean a thing)

by LadyMerlin



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study (ish), College Student Adam Parrish, Coming Out, Established Relationship, Harvard Era, M/M, No Angst, No spoilers for CDTH because I haven't read it yet, POV Outsider, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish Fluff, Slice of Life, Truth or Dare, gangsey friendship - Freeform, post-trk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21582010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMerlin/pseuds/LadyMerlin
Summary: Everyone at Harvard feels impossibly young.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 37
Kudos: 508





	the notions of us (don't mean a thing)

**Author's Note:**

> if I ever forsake the opportunity to make characters play truth or dare in my fics please start checking for pod people
> 
> title comes from the song 'One' by Birdtalker (kinda)

Everyone at Harvard feels impossibly young. 

Or maybe, it’s Adam who feels terribly old, compared to all of them. 

He supposes it’s because of his own unique life experiences, from growing up in the trailer park to the quest for Glendower; it feels like he’s looking back at a life half-lived. It’s strange to think that they’re all the same age when it feels like there’s a wall between them, keeping him just one step removed from their youth and joy and inexperience. 

Which is not to say that Adam is unhappy, because he is. Harvard is almost everything he’s ever dreamed of his entire life. He misses Ronan and Gansey and Blue like severed limbs but at the same time the separation doesn’t seem permanent. It feels like he could turn any corner and fall into Monmouth or the Barns, or straight into Ronan’s lap - being apart from them doesn’t feel real. Maybe it’ll sink in sometime later and maybe it won’t. Maybe having them so deeply embedded in his heart means he doesn’t need to be physically close to them. For now he’s just grateful that the homesickness isn’t crippling, despite all his missing appendages. 

He does try to fit in. When he’s not studying or working, he hangs around in the common room while his peers are drinking and playing games and having fun, the way young people do. Adam isn’t popular but he’s not unpopular either; he exists in a liminal space in between the two, where people don’t _know_ him but they know _of_ him, and most people don’t mind him hanging around. A little bit like grad students or the RAs; somewhat removed, not exactly one of them, but not entirely apart either. 

It’s a good thing that Adam is used to not fitting in. 

It’s on one of those occasions when Adam is sitting in the common room while a party is going on. It’s low-key for a dorm party, but Adam can still feel the energy bubbling underneath his skin, like a contagion. The kids - Adam reminds himself that he’s technically one of them - are gathering in a circle with drinks and bags of chips, when one of them calls his name. “Why don’t you join us, Adam?” 

He blinks because he hadn’t expected the invitation, but smiles in reply anyway. He doesn’t remember his invitors name but it doesn’t seem to matter because when he nods, she grins at him and turns away, not expecting anything more than that. 

The circle loosens up just a bit and he sinks into an open space. “Everyone know the rules? We’re playing never-have-I-ever,” the same girl says, clasping her hands in front of her chest and beaming at everyone around the circle. Between one blink and the next, he thinks he sees something of Gansey in her, a shade of his unthinking kindness and leadership. It’s good to know that she isn’t treating Adam differently, that she’d have invited anyone to join the game. He’s changed over the past few years, but he still doesn’t enjoy being singled out. There’s a general noise of agreement, and her smile widens. “Then let’s begin.” 

Ronan is going to laugh his ass off when he finds out that the first person Adam actually likes at university is a female version of Gansey. 

The game progresses as expected. The first few rounds are generic and non-offensive, but as people get more comfortable with each other and the night wears on, the circle gets smaller and more intimate as people excuse themselves to go to bed. By the time the clock strikes midnight, there are only about ten of them left in the common room, and Adam likes most of them. Or at least, there’s no one he actively dislikes. He supposes there’s something to be said for ice-breaker games, though he’s never played this one before. 

“Never have I ever kissed a boy,” someone says. Adam takes a sip of his lukewarm cider before he realises what he’s doing. His hopes that no one noticed are dashed when the girl who asked the question - Anna or Ann or Amy or something - gasps and slaps her neighbour’s knee. “ _Adam_ ,” she whisper-shouts, announcing his actions to the world. 

“Yes?” he asks, trying not to laugh out loud. He’d had no intention of hiding this part of himself here, not when there’s a good chance that Ronan might visit him some day. He isn’t that person, anymore, but he hadn’t exactly intended to out himself like this, accidentally. 

“You’ve kissed a _boy_?” Anna-Ann-Amy demands and she sounds so _young_ that it’s mystifying to think that they’re the same age. _God_ , had Adam ever sounded that young? 

“Well, considering I have a boyfriend, it’d be a little strange if I hadn’t, don’t you think?” 

Anna-Ann-Amy’s face goes red and she looks like she’s going to shriek but her neighbour, a girl with bleach-blonde braids slaps a palm over her mouth and rolls her eyes. “I apologise on Ann’s behalf,” she says, “she’s a bit sheltered.” 

Adam shrugs, unoffended, still smiling a little at the thought of Ronan’s face if he’d been here. In hindsight, he’s glad that he hadn’t asked Ronan to come to university with him, even though Adam misses him terribly. Asking him to stay would’ve been like asking a tiger to play at being a housecat, and he loves Ronan far too much to inflict that on him. 

“I call bullshit,” another guy says. He has dark hair and dark eyes and Adam recognises him from one of his pre-law classes. “You’re not gay,” he continues, like he’s announcing a fact. 

Adam shrugs again. “I’m not. I’m bi.” He’s not too bothered by the heckling, though two years ago he’d have taken it as a personal challenge. Being with Ronan has settled him in ways he couldn’t have imagined. 

“You got a picture? Of your boyfriend?” 

Adam thinks about it. Most of the pictures Ronan sends him are of other things and other people, of Opal and Chainsaw and Blue and his favourite lamb and a tree which looks like it has a face. He doesn’t think he has a single picture of _Ronan’s_ face, except… except one picture which Cheng had taken, just before they’d all gone their separate ways. It sits in a frame on his bedside table. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll just get it, hang on.” 

He doesn’t know exactly why he’s even bothering with this, but as he makes the short trip to his room and back he thinks it has something to do with being proud of himself, and being proud of Ronan. He can’t help but want to show off his boyfriend, even if these strangers wouldn’t know Ronan from, well, Adam. Also people might stop hitting on him if they establish that he’s in a happy, monogamous relationship. He knows it’s not how these things work, but hope springs eternal.

The room is quiet when he walks back in and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that they’d been talking about him. It doesn’t bother him much. He sits down and hands the frame over to the one who’d asked for a picture, and everyone tumbles over to look at it. Adam isn’t sure what he’s done to engender such curiosity about his private life, but it’s a little funny, and a little fun too, to be a part of this. 

“Which one is it?” Ann asks, a little pink in the cheeks. It’s a picture of the five of them, the Gangsey (as Blue had named them), sitting in the living room at Monmouth. Cheng had set up a camera on a tripod in the corner of the room and they’d forgotten about it until the next day, when Cheng had started going through the pictures it had taken apparently of its own volition. Adam doesn’t think that sort of camera exists on the market, but he isn’t one to pry. 

“Guess,” he replies, grinning a little. 

He knows what the picture looks like. It’s imprinted in his heart and whenever he’s missing his friends a little too much, he looks at the picture and reminds himself that everyone in it loves him just as much as he loves them. Just looking at it is enough to transport him to that day when Gansey had been sitting in the middle wearing a very Gansey-esque salmon-pink polo, Blue on his right and Adam on his left, sticking out their tongues at each other while Gansey looks at them fondly. Ronan had been on the ground, shaved head pressed against Adam’s knee, wearing a lazy smirk and reaching out to destroy Cheng’s hair. He still remembers the day, the feeling of Ronan’s bare scalp underneath his fingertips, leaning down and kiss him until their lips were swollen, Blue mock-gagging in the background. There’s a framed picture of Noah sitting on the coffee-table; his face can’t be seen but Adam knows it’s there. 

“Polo tee,” someone suggests. The dark-haired doubter. Adam snorts at the thought of dating Gansey and shakes his head. 

“Hair guy,” someone else tries, and Adam shakes his head again. It figures that none of them can imagine a person like him dating someone like Ronan.

“What, you’re dating tall-dark-and-dangerous?” Ann asks, all incredulous and shocked. 

“Ronan,” Adam provides, “yes.” He knows what it looks like. He knows what people think when they see him and Ronan together, the stereotypes they rely on when people try to categorise their relationship. It doesn’t bother Ronan, and it bothers Adam less now than it used to. 

“He looks like he could _cut_ you!” 

Adam laughs out loud and downs the last of his cider, but doesn’t bother denying it. When Ronan visits, they’ll see. They’ll realise that Ronan would rather cut his own hands off than hurt Adam. They’ll understand that Adam is the dangerous one, that Ronan’s bark is louder than his bite. They’ll figure out that their preconceived notions are wrong when they see how tenderly Ronan looks at him or the way Ronan kisses his fingertips and brushes his hair out of his eyes. 

Or they won’t. It hardly matters. 

For now, Adam doesn’t mind being the one with the tall-dark-and-dangerous boyfriend back home. “He’s probably going to come pick me up for Christmas, if you want to meet him?” 

The uproar that follows is what finally causes the RA to chase them out of the common room and back into their own separate rooms. Adam accepts the frame when Ann offers it to him, smiling a little softly when he looks at it, remembering the way Ronan’s face has turned up towards him, like a sunflower following the sun. 

A voice in the back of his head wonders if it isn’t vanity, if he isn’t overstating his own importance to Ronan, but he quashes it easily; if Adam is the sun to Ronan’s sunflower, then Ronan is the planet around which Adam revolves, the center of his universe, keeping him in a stable orbit. There’s nothing vain about facts. 

He kicks his shoes off before falling into his bed, and even though it’s small it’s more comfortable than the one he’d had in the flat above St Agnes. He plugs his first-ever mobile phone into the charger on his bedside table and dials Ronan’s number from memory. 

The phone rings, and he closes his eyes and waits for Ronan’s voice to take him home. 

**Author's Note:**

> i know this probably wasn't very exciting but i'm getting a feel for their characterisation while i wait for bookdepository to deliver canon to my doorstep. the exciting stuff will come soon. in the meantime, do let me know if i've got Adam right!


End file.
